


How Did a Nice Kid Like You Get Stuck Like This?

by AstraKiseki



Series: Environmental Systems And You [1]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Anxiety Disorder, Ecologist!Carlos, Gen, Headcanon, I'll expand on this later, grad student!Carlos, temporary one-shot, young!Carlos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-06
Updated: 2013-11-06
Packaged: 2017-12-31 17:17:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1034293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstraKiseki/pseuds/AstraKiseki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No matter how brilliant or valued, sometimes people had to sacrifice for what was the best (easiest) for everyone else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Did a Nice Kid Like You Get Stuck Like This?

**Author's Note:**

> This will get expanded on later, and unfortunately, is unbetaed. I wanted to get this specific piece of headcanon out because I liked the idea of Carlos not being the leader of the team of scientists, and wanted to surprise a friend.

It had been an accident, decided on the way there as they had been all sitting at one of the small diners that had been on the way there.  He had been distracted, like he always was when he wasn't focused on work, talking to a trucker in the restroom as they had washed their hands.  He could remember what it was about, him asking what he was shipping to where, and listening to the man, burly and with a roll to his Rs, as he had hummed Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star to know he was done washing his hands.  
  
Carlos had walked out of the room and into the main part, whatever that word was, wiping his hands on his labcoat (it made him feel less like a kid), and it was just water before he had looked up and seen the expectant, smiling faces, all glowing towards him, and his stomach dropped.  A decision had been made without him, and it definitely wasn't grunt work, by the tightness at Lakshmi's kind eyes, it was one that definitely should have been made with him, not for him, from how everyone was sheepishly shifting about.  It took Jack getting up and walking forward, that made him rebuild the flooring in his gut.  
  
But when Jack started smattering, the foundation crumbled apart.  It's easier when it goes down like a hatchet, a good swift cut, so he has a good foundation for his panic, but the team's botantist doesn't know that.  Lakshmi and Mitchell do, and their eyes were averted, guilty.  
  
Pity he hadn't listened to the discussion before he had declared he was going to the restroom, to breathe a bit after six hours in a car.  That probably led to the decision and him being chosen without getting a say, whatever it was.  That and taking too long in there, but who could blame him?   Carlos, they had all been cooped up and he had been sandwiched in the middle because of his size, and preference to curl up as tightly as possible, to avoid the blare, fight down the flinch when someone's skin or leg brushed along his coat or his knee.  
  
It was why he had talked to the trucker.  Carlos had thought that it must be nice, having the ability to talk when you wanted to talk and banish away the rushing water in your head, when you couldn't get your thoughts to settle, and then just turn off and ignore things and just drive on when you had your fill.  Carlos couldn't drive, it wasn't distracting enough for him to focus, but the fact remained that he did like people, they fascinated him almost as much as his work, the little details and microbes and plants and interactions of organisms and the wonderful and lovely interdisplinary waltz that was the world, the one that had him on this investigation on the environmental system that was Night Vale in the first place, their formal ecologist.  
  
No matter how brilliant or valued, sometimes people had to sacrifice for what was the best (easiest) for everyone else.  Lakshmi was a teacher who knew how to run a laboratory, certainly, but she felt painfully uncomfortable discussing things she didn't know well.  Mitchell had a speech impediment, did better with handwriting and sign language (Jack knew the latter, and had been showing Carlos). Julian's accent was too thick to be understood by people who didn't know him, and then there was Jack and his difficulties in speaking in layman's terms when it came to science. And Minnie who outright refused to talk in public.  And then there was Carlos, Carlos who had taken speech therapy, public speaking classes, even liked people for the most part.  Who was a good fifteen years younger than his colleagues on this project, a fresh, sweet face with gray at his temples (too early).  Everyone else agreed he was perfect for it.  Someone had to do it.  
  
And that was the gist of how Carlos found himself speaking on the behalf of the project, despite the fact his stomach was doing flip-flops the whole time, his face about as blanched as it could get, another far-too-premature gray hair added to his temples, as he introduced everyone to Night Vale.


End file.
